Now, staying with Venus, one of NASA’s intrepid solar system explorers is headed for a close encounter with this Earth-sized greenhouse on November 6. Parker Solar Probe studies the closest star to our planet, the Sun. Its mission is to trace the flow of energy that heats the Sun’s outer atmosphere and accelerates the flow of particles emitted to millions of kilometers per hour. It makes its measurements very close to the Sun, in the region where all the action takes place. To do this, the spacecraft was designed to fly just 6 million kilometers from the surface of the Sun, or 10 times closer than the orbit of the nearest planet, Mercury. No other spacecraft has ever come this close to the Sun before. In the six years since its launch, the spacecraft has made numerous approaches to the Sun, using flybys of the planet Venus to shape its orbit. The November 6 flyby is the final such maneuver, intended to send the spacecraft toward its three closest solar approaches ever, beginning December 24. During this final flyby of Venus, the mission will capture images of the planet. Previous views returned by Parker showed that the spacecraft could actually see features of the Venusian surface through its dense cloud cover. So watch out for Venus in the evening sky, as the bright planet helps an Earth craft touch the face of the Sun.